I'll tell you the first thing that caught my eye, Paul: Your title. And though I don't enjoy being the bearer of bad news, I must say that it did not catch my eye in the best way possible.

You see, when you present something, you should present it the best you can. One does not give a gift wrapped in toilet paper (most of the time) and expeact it to get the best reaction from the presentation. Likewise, if you have a title in all lower case and not traditional punctuation, chances are some of those picky readers out there aren't even going to give your story a chance.

The saying does go "Do not judge a book by its cover." However, the bad thing is, most people do. That in mind, make the cover a handsome one.

Alrighty. Onto the story itself.

I'll keep things simple.

For starters, start using Codeing. (Check it out in the link within my signature.) Use indents and text formatting to make your story look its best. Looks may not be the most important piece of a story, but they certainly do make it easier and better to read.

Additionally, next time, take the time to format your story a little better. For instance, keep things consistent. Keep your paragraphs broken up evenly, as well as your spacing. Inconsistency will confuse readers real fast. So you have to make sure to get in that spacing so that we as readers can get a firm grasp on the story.

Thirdly, I would highly suggest keeping it to one chapter per submission. It's easy that way. Easy to keep track of and easy to organize. You post once, you have one chapter. Simple. Plus, when you keep it seperated that way, the same material is gonna be in the same post. Keep that in mind. Logistics are important when you present a story via multiple web posts.

You wrote:

it gets a better story line later and it has more charecters and action.

Hmm.

Well, you should not aim for a better story line later. Instead, aim for a good story line all the way through your story. Plot is important. One cannot simply start adding in plot and expect the story to get better. No, you must instead start adding and building that plot from the beginning.

Also, adding more characters doesn't up the quality by itself, either. Adding more ingredients to a recipe doesn't make it taste any better. Only the right ingredients and right portions will accomplish that. So don't just throw in more characters to try to make the story more interesting, take the time and care to use the characters you have; develop them and let them grow in the story. After that, if you need more, then go right ahead and smoothly add them in. But no character dumping.

Lastly (but not leastly) action is not what makes a story. See, there are some people out there that only care about action. Well, in all honesty, they are missing out considerably. Action is not all that matters in a story. It is only a single element of a plot and narrative, and in all actuality not needed most of the time. Sure, it makes things exciting at moments, but you shouldn't cram it in so that people will be more interested in your story.

Writing. Formatting. Plot. Character development. Work on those before you throw in any more action.

Overall, this is just a starter piece, and that's just fine. Everyone starts somewhere. And the more you work from your start, and the more effort you put into improving your writing, the better you will get. Good luck, Paul. Keep it up._________________-MCC

Now, I know I have not that much experience in reviewing or constructive criticism (6th post, yay...), but I will say that you must put more effort in making your story readable.

1.) First off, use words to express numericals, like "I was six feet and two inches".

2.) Another thing, capitalize man, capitalize! I counted several times where you didn't capitalize "I" among other things.

3.) Third, and your going to hear this a lot if you keep writing like this, Show, don't Tell. For instance, instead of "We were walking down the street." you can write "My friend and I were walking down a thin, dusty street, littered with the garbage of that day. As we continued down the street, my friend pointed upward at a passing airplane saying 'we don't get too many of 'em here.' I looked up too, recognizing the markings, and told my friend that that was Dirk Pitt's plane from the town a few miles north.'" There, I just extended that phrase into a small paragraph, explaining the setting and having an insignificant event occur that occupies the reader until the plot line can take over.

Quote:

it gets a better story line later and it has more charecters and action.

4.) Also, don't put Author's notes at the end of the story, but instead post them once your story is submitted. It's neater, easier to see, and doesn't detract from the story itself.

5.) Write the story in a document first, preferrably one with a spell check (GPS errors, GAH). And read the code section and use it.

Quote:

We clambered into a tank and i drove. "use the gun"! i told John. he nodded. I crushed the alien with the tank and we drove on. John blew a carrier out the sky with a shell and he whooped.

5.) Not to be mean or anything, but man, you gotta put some realism in this thing. How could someone climb into a wraith and just drive away? And, how could that wraith bring down a Covie Carrier that usually takes a dozen UNSC frigates along with it? I could go on and on.

6.) One last thing (gtg soon), it may seem insignificant now, but if you have a lot of dialogue, you must put any punctuation before the quotes and a comma if it is a period and not the end of the sentence. For instance, "Wow, that's the biggest boat I've seen in years!" or "'Man, I'm so depressed," lamented Charlie."

Keep writing and you'll improve. You can check out some of my first writing attempts (O, how I long to hack into the server and delete them... ) Anyway, practice makes perfect, man, practice makes perfect. Make me proud!